What is the difference between “here goes” and “here it goes”?

Question

I’m wondering what the difference between here goes and here it goes is. When something is going down and I want to express my feeling of “I’ll make it!”, which expression is correct?

For example, when my job interview is going to start, would I write the first or the second?

I got ready for the interview. Here goes! 
  I got ready for the interview. Here it goes!

If these expressions are same, please tell me which expression you natives often use.

phenry · Answer

Here goes is an idiom that is usually used to express determination or optimism at the start of a risky or difficult task. The implicit subject of goes would be the party taking the action--think of it as shorthand for "Here I go," "here we go," "here you go," etc.

For this reason, I would not use here it goes in that way. It is more likely to be used in a more straight forward way: "Now, which drawer should I put this fork in? Oh, here it goes."

Foobie Bletch · Answer

I always interpreted it as a truncation of "Here goes nothing," in which context "nothing" is the thing that's going and "here" is where it's going. It's the same sort of syntactic inversion you see in contexts like "There goes ____" and "Here comes ____".

Answered by Foobie Bletch on May 10, 2021

What is the difference between “here goes” and “here it goes”?

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